"Judea/Israel Under the Roman Empire." Israel and Empire: a Postcolonial History of Israel and Early Judaism. Perdue, Leo G., and Warren Carter.Baker, Coleman A., Eds
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"Judea/Israel under the Roman Empire." Israel and Empire: A Postcolonial History of Israel and Early Judaism. Perdue, Leo G., and Warren Carter.Baker, Coleman A., eds. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. 217–292. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780567669797.ch-006>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 06:15 UTC. Copyright © Leo G. Perdue, Warren Carter and Coleman A. Baker 2015. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 6 Judea/Israel under the Roman Empire What might a postcolonial optic highlight in the interactions between Rome and Judea/Israel in the centuries between 63 BCE when Pompey asserts Roman control, and 135 CE when the Bar Kokhba-led revolt is crushed?1 The question gains some pointedness with the general aban- donment of the old stereotype of Judea/Israel as a seething cauldron of rebellious anger that �nally boils over in the 6670 CE war. Martin Goodman has largely argued the opposite view in proposing a double thesis: the lack of anti-Roman resentment and an accidental war. The travails of Judea up to 66, he writes, do not suggest a society on the brink of rebellion for sixty years. Rather, the tensions of the 50s CE comprised terrorism within Jewish society rather than revolt against Rome [They were] internal to Jewish society rather than symptoms of widespread resentment of Roman rule. The reason for the lack of blatantly revolutionary behavior to support [Josephus] picture of a decline into war was that no such revolutionary behavior occurred. Josephus makes little mention of any consistent anti-Roman ideology.2 The destruction of Jerusalem was the product of no long-term policy on either side. It had come about through a com- bination of accidents, most of them unrelated in origin to the con�ict: the death of Nero, leading to Vespasians bid for power in Rome and Titus quest for the propaganda coup of a rapid conquest of Jerusalem, and the devastating effect in the summer heat of a �rebrand thrown by a soldier into the Temple of God.3 Goodman concludes there was no widespread resentment against Rome and that the war of 6670 CE was accidental. Seth Schwartz offers a different evaluation of the interaction between Rome and Judea/Israel. He argues that the impact of different types of 1. Segovia, Mapping the Postcolonial Optic. 2. Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 389-95. 3. Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 423. 218 ISRAEL AND EMPIRE foreign domination on the inner structure of ancient Jewish society primarily in Palestine was, at least initially, galvanizing and integrating. Recognizing that the effects of domination were complex, pervasive, and varied and emphasizing the generative and galvanizing impact of imperialism, notably Romes strategy of autonomous provinces and empowered local elite leadership, Schwartz argues that a signi�cant homogeneity in Jewish society resulted. A loosely centralized, ideol- ogically complex society came into existence by the second century BCE [and then] collapsed in the wake of the destruction and the imposition of direct Roman rule after 70 CE.4 The heart of this homogeneity comprised God, Temple, and Torah.5 I argue, writes Schwartz, that imperial support for the central national institutions of the Jews, the Jerusalem temple and the Pentateuch, helps explain why these eventually became the chief symbols of Jewish corporate identity. The history of the Second Temple period is one of integration, in which more and more Jews came to de�ne themselves around these symbols.6 In emphasizing Judaism as the integrating ideology of the society, he recognizes that Judaism was complex, capacious, and rather frayed at the edges [though] I reject the characterization of Judaism as multiple.7 Discussion of sectarianism does not disappear from his work and he argues for signi�cant numbers of elite (male) adherents at least for various sects, and for their mainstream location.8 After 70 and the revolt of 132135, the impact of imperialism was quite different. In a word or two, Judaism shattered or fragmented.9 How are we to describe the interaction between Rome and Judea/ Israel? A seething cauldron of resentment? Relatively benign interactions with little anti-Roman resentment and an accidental war? An initial and protracted galvanizing and integrating impact followed by a shattering and destructive impact (though the last chapter suggested considerable fragmentation from the outset)? What might a postcolonial optic offer in the consideration of this well-rehearsed but contentious material?10 4. Schwartz, Imperialism. He concludes (291) that imperial domination and the imperial empowerment of Jewish leaders produced the complex loosely centralized but still basically unitary Jewish society. 5. Schwartz, Imperialism, 49. 6. Schwartz, Imperialism, 14. 7. Schwartz, Imperialism, 9, 98. 8. Schwartz, Imperialism, 91-98. 9. Schwartz, Imperialism, 15. 10. In addition to Chapters 1 and 5 above, useful introductions to postcolonial discussion include Williams and Chrisman, Colonial Discourse; Ashcroft, Grif�ths, and Tif�n, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader; Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory; Young, 1 6. JUDEA / ISRAEL UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE 219 While nearly everything about postcolonial studies is disputed, the discourse at its center concerns the assertions and representations of unequal and multi-dimensional power relations of domination (the imperializing center) and subordination (the receiving margins) that comprise complex imperialcolonial experiences marked by ambiva- lence, hybridity, and mimicry.11 The extent of such discussion is enor- mous. This chapter will focus on the imperialcolonial interactions involving Rome and Judea/Israel in the period from 67 BCE135 CE. One danger of such an exploration is to regard all colonial interaction with the center in homogenized perspective. Studies alert us to multiple forms of negotiation employed by both provincial elites and powerless or subaltern groups. Our focus will concern the various dynamics in play when colonials of various statuses negotiate imperial power with varying, simultaneous, and sometimes violent strategies. Some previous discussions that cast this interaction in terms of dualisms such as resistance or compliance, peaceful coexistence or violent rebellion, foreign imperializer and local rebel are simplistic and distorting. I emphasized in the last chapter the reciprocal interaction between imperializer and colonized and the ambivalent situation or third space that is created. As James C. Scott argues, in-between poles of cooperation and disruption are the ambivalent spaces (the third spaces), where much actual negotiation of superior power takes place.12 Some locals, especially elites but not exclusively so, openly and fully cooperate because it serves their needs to do so. Others do so in varying degrees, whether for reasons of self-interest or of pragmatic survival. The powerless also often use apparent compliance to disguise and mask dissent as well as to ensure survival. What seems to be cooperation can hide acts of resistance or of distancing from the imperializers agenda. Anonymity masks de�ance, and careful and self-protective calculation accompanies its expression. Compliance and resistance exist simul- taneously; ambiguity is common; ambiguity and hybridity the norm. Violence is by no means the only expression of opposition and physical confrontation is not the only form of violence. To equate opposition with violence is to miss much imperialcolonial negotiation. In fact, power- less subalterns are often reluctant to employ public physical violence because they know that the rupturing of the social fabric of apparent Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction; Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction; also standard works, Bhabha, The Location; Spivak, A Critique; Mbembe, On the Postcolony. 11. Segovia, Mapping the Postcolonial Optic, 66-67. 12. Scott, Domination, 136. 1 220 ISRAEL AND EMPIRE compliance is very dangerous and, more likely than not given the power dynamics, will result in their own demise. Scott argues that the powerless nurture a hidden transcript, an alternative version of reality, in spaces away from the imperializers gaze. Local traditions and practices form the basis of this hidden transcript that contests the public transcript, or the imperializers of�cial way of ordering the world and narrating its story. As I will note in the subsequent discussion, equating the lack of violence with a lack of opposition or resentment, equating relative public peace with compliance, seems to mar much of Goodmans analysis. In relation to violence, another dynamic of imperialcolonial interac- tions must be noted. As discussed in the previous chapter, horizontal disputes in the form of inter-group con�ict, verbal polemic, and physical violence are common where vertical imperial pressure is exerted on a society. Various imperial situations, ancient and modern, attest this dynamic. Josephus indicates increasing divisions and inter-faction con- �ict in Judea/Israel and Jerusalem during the 6670 war as imperial pressure intensi�es on rebel groups: for example, Eleazar against Menachem (J.W. 2.442-48), John of Gischala against Josephus (J.W. 2.592-94), Idumeans against Ananus (J.W. 4.300-325), Zealots against John (J.W. 4.377-97), Simon bar Gioras (J.W. 4.503-44), and Eleazar, John, and Simon (J.W.